Waco wrote:Drop the AMD figures by 30% on average (for a move to Zen 2 / Rome) and the ARM prospect (at least, that particular chip) is a lot less inviting.
certainly true. And this particular ARM chip has a process advantage over these particular x86 chips.
But to me, the noteworthy thing here is that a pretty generic implementation of an ARM reference design does as well as it does. And to the extent that it deviates from the reference ARM design, it does so by reducing cache (???)
I think this suggests that a company that invests more than the minimal effort could really give x86 some stiff competition in the server space, especially when you factor in cost. For Amazon this might be a no-brainer -- why should they keep funding Intel's 60% margins? And as soon as people get used to running Windows and Linux on Amzon's processors in the cloud, why not buy servers from Amazon? Or desktops?
The disruption coming for Intel is so much bigger than just AMD. Intel totally deserves it, but I do feel bad for national security reasons.
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